A View from the Bridge NYC Reviews and Tickets

"Ivo van Hove’s magnificent reconception of Arthur Miller’s 'A View From the Bridge,' takes you into extreme emotional territory that you seldom dare visit in daily life. At the end of its uninterrupted two hours, you are wrung out, scooped out and so exhausted that you’re wide awake...Mr. Strong’s is the most powerful single performance you’re likely to see this year."
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"Director Ivo van Hove digs down and grabs the pulsing, bloody heart of Arthur Miller’s 1956 drama…Mark Strong gives a performance of harrowing intensity as doomed Eddie Carbone…Van Hove stages this elegant and lean tale with almost perverse understatement…The simplicity and restraint, however, gathers to a ferocious and bloody head that leaves you breathless and aghast...The ensemble is uniformly superb, palpably relishing van Hove’s emotionally transparent approach."
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"The lack of clutter is certainly chic, but without the furniture and props Miller specified, some points are unclear…What makes this slight misfit of play and production finally unimportant is that the actors are so devastatingly good…Some of the credit for the cast’s superb work obviously belongs to van Hove; he knew he needed actors who could stand up to his powerful, showy interventions. It’s a fair trade; those interventions probably made this revival viable."
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"Ivo van Hove's stunning reappraisal of the 1956 Arthur Miller drama is led by a knockout performance from Mark Strong…Performed by a sizzling ensemble led by Mark Strong, this is powerhouse theater that leaves you breathless…Van Hove strips the play down to its raw bones…By peeling away the real-world trappings, the production releases something primal in Miller's drama."
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"The dirge-like music that underscores the entire production can grow tiresome and sometimes heavy-handed…As for Eddie, Strong is fiery-eyed and fiercely unsympathetic. He goes for the jugular, but not our heartstrings...If you find yourself dry-eyed at the end of van Hove’s high-concept, low-frills production, there’s no need to check your pulse. And if you find yourself relating to Eddie, there’s no need to panic; that means Strong (and Miller) succeeded."
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"Breathe, everybody, breathe! Audiences really need to be reminded of that at the end of Ivo Van Hove’s magnificent production…The show, anchored by a towering performance from Mark Strong as a longshoreman whose willful blindness causes his whole world to come crashing down, is both visually gorgeous and an emotional wipeout…Strong scales those heights, giving an electrifying performance of raw power and terrifying beauty."
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"Mr. Van Hove...doesn’t seem to care whether any of his over-familiar avant-garde tricks are organically related to the script. Instead, they’re poured over it like a rancid sauce...What you find underneath is a staging that gets to the point of Miller’s play with near-naturalistic directness. Not only does he move actors around fluidly, but he also knows how to pick them...Unfortunately, he neither trusts them nor the play, which is pretentious in its own way."
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"Director Ivo Van Hove’s revival of Arthur Miller's 'A View From the Bridge' not only has all of these elements, but sets a new standard on what theatre can be…This show is a once-in-a-lifetime production and truly a great achievement of Van Hove and his cast and crew. Go see this show—you will come away from it completely exhausted but fulfilled."
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"I have to admit I’m of two minds about Van Hove’s 'A View From the Bridge.' My 30-year-old critic self probably would have thrilled to the ballsiness of turning a naturalistic melodrama into a Greek tragedy…But my older-critic self says, 'Leave the damned play alone...' The Germans call this director’s theater, and it’s not for me. Despite a splendid cast led by Mark Strong as Eddie…And especially Nicola Walker, who is heartbreaking as Bea."
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"And just like that, Ivo van Hove cements his place irrefutably among the most revolutionary theater makers of our time. Because in its elemental economy, its flashes of uncanny insight, his revival of Arthur Miller’s 'A View from the Bridge' is simply staggering…A required destination for any pilgrim whose object of worship is serious drama."
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"This is the very rare production that matches the complexity of the text, with its mixed-messaged collision of the cerebral and the sensual, a dichotomy at the heart of everything Miller ever wrote…Van Hove's brilliance is multifaceted, but much rests on his ability to focus the mind and soul on a work's tiny moments."
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"No stars, no props and a minimal set help us focus on the tortured relationships at the heart of this modern tragedy. The tension never dips as the show heads toward the kind of mind-blowing climax that’s the stuff of Broadway legend. Admittedly, those familiar with the 1955 play’s web of passion, jealousy and betrayal will get more out of this production’s bracing new insights. But the show’s so strong, its impact feels universal."
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"Strong is manly, magnetic and as persuasive as a heart attack…The stark staging by van Hove, a Broadway newcomer who’s known for stripped-back takes on classics, gets straight to the meat of the story…If there’s a quibble it’s that Eddie’s final fate may be somewhat unclear if you don’t know the play. Also, constant underscoring of sacred music, ambient sounds and percussive beats leads to diminishing returns."
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"Hove takes a scalpel-edged, stripped-down yet over-the-top approach that drains the play of its naturalistic flavor...But what really hurts the two-hour production is Hove's never-ending use of an unsettling, dirge-like soundscape, which interrupts the dialogue and is often disconnected from the storytelling...Mark Strong conveys Eddie's inner torment with a quiet intensity."
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"I have seen the play many times and yet there are moments in this production that took my breath away. Van Hove’s harrowing staging of the climactic final scenes will leave you emotionally drained. But I’m a little perplexed by some directorial choices - the bare feet, the inconsistent accents and the constant drumbeats - distracting touches that momentarily took me out of the here and now."
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"While this may seem like a bold reimagining of an American classic by a European auteur, it's actually a lot closer to Miller's original intent…The aptly named Strong embodies those urges in his earthy, virile portrayal of Eddie…Van Hove does Miller a great honor by taking 'A View from the Bridge' out of the museum and asserting it as a living, breathing work capable of being reimagined ad infinitum, like the best plays by Shakespeare."
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"His highly-stylized mounting, like many of his creations, seems to give his vision authority over the play's content. It's different, for sure, but enlightening? Not so sure. The cold and stripped-down production has enough textual cuts that it can be called 'A View From Abridged…' There seems to be a lack of subtlety that the director imposes throughout evening."
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"It is clear that the director has built his own show on Miller's script. 'A View From the Bridge' may have been written in a relatively conventional naturalistic style, but it teems with life - ugly, vivid, and violent. Van Hove's staging freezes its emotions and arranges them into a sleek, minimalist tableau. You may very well enjoy it, but I hope that someday you get to see the play that Arthur Miller wrote. "
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"Van Hove's spin, however, does not deepen or redefine this basic struggle; it simply presents it, divorced from its anchoring location and era, as if overeager to highlight the story's timeliness...The performances are all rock-solid within a very difficult framework…This production proves that van Hove's attempts to untether 'A View From the Bridge' have only locked it away further, behind an opaque cube that, like that of his set, he'd better off lifting away."
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"Hypnotic power that is rarely seen in our theater…Van Hove’s version makes you feel that you have never seen the play before...The casting is superb and each actor’s presence is palpably felt...When 'A View from the Bridge' is over, the audience knows that it has participated in a communal act of catharsis...This production demonstrates without a doubt that this is what Arthur Miller was attempting in 'View' and has succeeded completely."
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"Van Hove has directed a classy cast to make the Carbone family and other key characters come to vivid and believable life…Mark Strong's Eddie is the magnetic centerpiece…A visually and aurally elegant production...There are a few spots between the breathtaking opening and finale that feel a bit slow without more realistic details about the neighborhood...Still, this is a a highly theatrical, not to be missed tribute to the play's durability."
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"The intense performance by Mark Strong, making his Broadway debut, supported by the rest of the outstanding cast, makes this 'View' worth viewing, but the powerful acting is not what makes this production distinct from previous versions. It’s the direction by Ivo van Hove...aggressive staging has provoked passionate and opposing reactions...Any production whose cast so engages the audience with the playwright’s words pays the ultimate respect to the playwright."
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"This is an exhilarating production, assured and perilous, abstract and concretely physical…In Mark Strong’s extraordinary and visceral performance we see a man who has become a stranger to himself, a paragon of manhood unmanned and set adrift both by his own desires and by challenges to his masculine assumptions...Strong is well supported by the other cast members, though accents can waver between south Brooklyn and north London."
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"Van Hove and his excellent cast take the lid off Eddie’s obsessions and inhibitions, ending in a literal blood bath. Van Hove is highly dramatic, but he isn’t always very subtle. Some of the performances, though, are both. Strong turns Eddie’s tragedy into an utter inability and unwillingness to understand his own motives."
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"The absence of the traditional stagecraft focuses all the attention on the text and the actors bringing it to life. The result is something akin to what watching an original production of a play by Sophocles must have been...It's hard to imagine that there will be a finer performance this season."
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"Strong delivers a fearless, riveting performance…Strong also affects a more convincing Brooklyn accent than some of his fellow Brits -- among them Fox, who seems a less-than-ideal fit for Catherine in other respects...Van Hove holds us rapt throughout, even when his flourishes feel overstated. While Miller's dialogue hardly requires such added fuss, the director should be commended for offering a fresh take that sacrifices none of its sting."
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"From the first moments of director Ivo van Hove’s stripped-down and downright stunning production of 'A View From the Bridge,' it is clear this will be unlike any other …This 'View' moves with the terrifying inevitability of myth…Most of this happens on designer Jan Versweyveld’s elevated plain square with an emotional honesty that makes even Miller’s heavier lines seem almost improvised."
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"With just six key parts, having two of them so poorly cast made a strong evening of theater seem a dreadful disappointment for being so close to greatness. A little more care and this would have been a classic staging…Strong and the two women in his life are exceptional and make this flawed but interesting production a must-see."
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"It’s hard to turn your eyes away from the stage for even an instant. This is theater at its most direct and enthralling, with the usual supporting elements stripped away so that the characters, on a nearly bare stage, are vividly revealed as creatures of pure, irresistible human impulse…If the atmosphere is stylized, the performances are totally naturalistic, led by English actor Mark Strong’s haunting portrayal of Eddie."
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"The latest revival of 'A View From the Bridge' will be noted for its stark set, ghostly sound effects and mesmerizing performance by Mark Strong, as the conflicted Italian-American longshoreman Eddie Carbone…This production hangs on the performance by Strong, who acts with his entire lanky body and nimbly moves between rationality and psychosis…’Bridge’ is edge-of-your seat drama that leaves you gritting your teeth."
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"The buzz around the current production hangs on the inventiveness of director Ivo van Hove. His refinement of the play to essentials, devoid of conventions of costume and set, offers us a truly fresh take on an American classic...A re-do of such an oft-produced play has to have a driving vision-or why go there? The vision here is raw in the primal sense of the word."
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"The result is alternately powerful and a wee bit ridiculous. The power comes mostly courtesy of an astonishing lead performance by British actor Mark Strong…Alas, this 'A View from the Bridge' doesn't quite cohere...The cast also contains a significant weak link in Fox…A touch more humor and humility might have gone a very long way."
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"Ivo van Hove certainly has stripped the play down. However, he has added so much more. Depending on one’s tastes, one could view this as either good or bad. It has European sensibilities and none of the American aesthetics, and this play is as American as you can get...Despite directorial overindulgences, Mark Strong and Nicola Walker certainly make 'A View From The Bridge' a must-see, raw and different interpretation of an American classic."
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"What is playing over at the Lyceum Theatre just may be some of the best theatre of the decade. This is no joke...Belgian experimental Director Ivo Van Hove's minimalist production is ominous and eerily powerful...The innovative staging is reminiscent of a cage match where the actors, all barefoot by the way, engage in a brawl for two hours…This production is nothing short of pure brilliance."
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"In the production that opened last night at the Lyceum, directed by Ivo Van Hove, what proceeds isn’t merely dreamlike but in fact a nightmare, an ominous parable told in a chimerical world, in which emotions are heightened, time suspended, and dread omnipresent."
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"An intensely gripping look at what has always been the closest thing to Greek tragedy Miller ever wrote…An electrifying and unexpected dance. The tensions that roil beneath this family’s surface simmer and explode. Mark Strong is brilliant as the deluded and denial-ridden Eddie…By the time we climb to the blood-drenched emotional climax of the story, we’re almost too tired to clamber out of our seats for the much-deserved ovation. But clamber we do. And then we breathe."
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"I can't compare Ivo van Hove's vision of this drama with another, but I know good theatre when I see it...Perhaps because the production is so raw and bare, it's easy to see this as a Shakespearean tragedy, and it is easy to draw comparisons to Miller's other leading men...Van Hove has revitalized a classic."
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"If you think you've seen Arthur Miller's dark classic 'A View From the Bridge' enough times, think again. The muscular production is a stunning, imaginative theatrical experience, an impassioned interpretation that really brings the heat to Miller's gripping drama…Eventually all the actors enfold one another in a haunting, anguished tableau, a brilliant visual summation by van Hove of how people in this close-knit community must stand or fall together."
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"Ivo van Hove's sparse style works its magic on this Arthur Miller classic, stripping down the play to just its text with no props or set dressings...There are no distractions of actors playing pretend over a dinner table or seaside docks; they simply face each other and deliver their lines, which heightens each moment of tension...Mark Strong delivers a memorable turn as Eddie; the rest of the cast members more than hold their own."
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"I liked this as well as I could. Ivo von Hove is a very thoughtful director, but he’ll never be my favorite...Hove’s production of Miller’s 'A View from the Bridge', is, however, the most lucid work I’ve seen from this sometimes opaque auteur director. It’s rock-solid theater for sure, but not quite up to the mark of director Gregory Mosher’s production a few seasons back...Worth seeing, but I didn’t find it the revelation some other people felt it to be."
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"'A View From the Bridge' succeeds in giving powerful and persuasive universality to the emotional conflicts of the Carbone family. On the other hand, the ethnic immediacy, physical context, social issues and gritty realism that also fired Miller in writing the play are submerged. I’m thrilled to have seen this version and feel it brought me to a deeper knowledge of the play than I had before….but I miss the old neighborhood."
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"The current production sets a new standard, and it certainly refreshes the play. What van Hove does – quite brilliantly – is to reduce ‘View’ to its essence…His ‘View’ works so well in large part because it’s done so simply, by an ensemble of superb actors...But there are a number of new touches at least as overwrought as the traditional ones...On balance, though, this 'View from the Bridge' is a production that should be seen by anyone interested in Miller and his work."
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"A brutal parable for the season of Trump, director Ivo van Hove's pared-back production of Arthur Miller's 'A View From the Bridge' depicts the paranoid mindset of aggrieved patriarchy. It's a timely tragedy: a reminder of how easily wounded pride can mutate into xenophobic aggression...Ignoring conventional markers of space and time, van Hove concocts a steadily mounting pressure."
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"What Mr. van Hove has done is reinforce the fact that this is a memory play...This allows him to create moments of art on the stage that are stunning and breathtaking...And in doing so, there is a level of tragedy you haven’t seen in this script before. This is an incredible theatrical event. I hope I get to see it again."
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"Though van Hove adds a few visual grace notes to the otherwise spare proceedings—including a cathartic, blood-soaked coup de théâtre at the end—the production keeps its focus on the story, the language, and the extraordinary performances of the actors...As superb as all the performances are individually, it is the actors’ connections to one another that give this production its electric charge."
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"'A View from the Bridge' is very good. It’s worth seeing. What keeps it from being great is obstructing the view for us poor people in the balcony and the trouble with dialects…"
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"In my opinion you should absolutely sit on the stage... The sound design is really phenomenal - it really adds to the tension... It just simmers, you could totally shout, but it was quiet and sincere and only boiled when it needed to boil."
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"An outstanding, strikingly original achievement that evokes the colloquial poetry of Miller’s dialogue...What’s truly impressive about the production is that until the shocking denouement the story has been played out without a single prop, trick or sleight of hand. Instead, it relies entirely on the actors’ skill and a rumbling ominous, barely heard soundtrack; sometimes a looped snatch of strings, sometimes just a Noh-style lone drumbeat."
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"Ivo van Hove’s stripped-back staging is definitive enough to ward a generation off Arthur Miller’s family drama. Played barefoot on a bare white stage, freed from its real-world setting, it’s like the play has been triple-distilled and served neat: 100 percent proof. For two hours straight, it plays on a knife-edge as we wait, wound-tight, for the inevitable detonation. You daren’t blink. You scarcely breathe. This is theater as an out of body experience."
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"'A View From the Bridge' is a two hour pot coming to the boil, a slow motion train wreck, a car speeding down the hill (no brakes). You have to buy in, from the beginning, to the idea that none of this can possibly end well, that this isn’t a straightforward fight but it’s so beautifully thought out, so well played, that you want to be right there, clinging to the ropes as they circle each other after the last bell. The intimacy and intensity of this has been lost in a bigger space."
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"To say visionary van Hove’s production of ‘A View from the Bridge’ is the best show at the moment is like saying Stonehenge is the current best rock arrangement in Wiltshire: it almost feels silly to compare this pure, primal, colossal thing with anything else in Theatreland...Miller’s terse text is turned into some fantastic hybrid of British naturalism, Greek tragedy, lab experiment and religious ritual, that begins with angelic music and light and ends in an all-consuming fountain of blood."
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"Van Hove’s great trick is to balance detailed, low-key and almost cinematic naturalistic performances within a non-naturalistic framework and let them bounce off each other in a series of dazzling reflections that enable us to see Miller’s play anew. From the menacing tick of a clock to the under-scoring with Fauré’s Requiem, this is a meticulously conceived production that reinvents Miller without ever getting in the way of the view."
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"The Belgian director Ivo van Hove has taken a drastically non-naturalistic approach to Arthur Miller's 1955 drama, set in Brooklyn's Italian-American neighbourhood, and the stripped-back intensity of focus is emotionally devastating...By the end, the audience is shaken by an overwhelming sense of catharsis. Unforgettable."
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"We have a breathless, interval-free 'View' performed with virtually no props, its cast circumnavigating the stage barefoot...The plot has a simplicity worthy of the Greek tragedy that this staging explicitly evokes...One could argue that so ramped-up an arena aesthetic turns the play into one long extended climax, and there are times when proceedings do get a bit shouty."
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"The problem with classic plays is that, in our minds at least, they can become cluttered and dusty, trailing after them into each revival the detritus of past productions. When this happens, it’s a case for Ivo van Hove...This radical rejuvenation of this over-familiar Arthur Miller drama takes up a deserved berth...This sleek, minimalist staging helps the production to feel as tightly, and inexorably, wound as a Greek tragedy."
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"The very best plays, like 'A View from the Bridge', are director and concept proof...The drama somewhat stalls in a slow scene in the family home and another featuring the young lovers, where the director seems keener to make artistic points than drive the narrative forward but thereafter, it heads inexorably towards an inevitable denouement. Despite some auteurial moments that do the original few favours, Arthur Miller has written far too strong a play for viewers to come away disappointed."
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"This is dynamic, inspirational theatre of the highest order...What Van Hove has achieved here is superb in every way. The telling of Miller’s tale is clean, pulsates with reason and truth and, like a great orchestral symphony, has a shape, a fierce force, a presence greater than each of its parts...Unmissable. Almost certainly the play of 2015. Do anything, absolutely anything, to get a seat."
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"It’s a mark of how good this staging is that you feel the characters’ former selves just below the surface because we join the story as it tips on to the slope towards disaster. And what is so painfully sad about van Hove’s unbearably tense production is the way it reminds you that the sorrow here has its origins in generosity...Just as there is no escape for characters, there is none either for the actors and they are all magnificent."
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"Theatre simply doesn't get better than this...Last year, when I saw this play, I wrote 'this production is simply faultless.' The same remains true today. Bearing witness to this show, one of the most extraordinary theatrical productions you will ever see, is an honour and a privilege."
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"While I am not necessarily an enthusiast for this kind of theatre, it works brilliantly in this production...By shearing MIller's awkwardly stylised play of all theatrical paraphernalia Van Hove returns it to its roots in Greek classical tragedy...We lose something in the process, the sweaty aroma of working men and sexually charged woman. But we gain a clarity in the telling and the play's architecture is exposed as through the lens of a microscope. A lean, mean drama machine."
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"This one is not for theatrical vegetarians. It is strong meat served very rare...This production has become a potent, pared-down, animalistic ritual...A knot of dread seems to tighten in his gut at the same rate it did in mine. I’ve seen this show before and knew what was coming. What makes it so impressive is that it still takes you by surprise."
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"A sweeping postmodern reanimation of Miller's play and if it sometimes seems a bit arty in the face of Miller's naturalism, it moves with a stark power towards its overpowering conclusion...There's no denying the spectacle and power of van Hove's denouement, with bodies writhing like creatures from an inferno in red light, blood-drenched as Fauré's Requiem, so lyrical and soothing in its solemnity, plays like a mockery while also emphasising the affinity of this modern tragedy with opera."
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"Irrational prejudice, illicit fumblings, homophobia with a whiff of repressed desire, betrayal, hysteria, self-destruction...director Ivo van Hove places all these and more under his microscope...The forensic thought that van Hove brings to the play is thrillingly rendered by an ensemble cast."
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"A truly remarkable production and I for one shall never forget it. There could be things that irritate, distract or downright annoy you but if that happens please stay with it, because it’s worth it...For a cast to give performances which invoke realism in the context of a non-realistic production is impressive...The power of the performances did however, not so much change my mind, as lead me to feel that the flaws were entirely worth tolerating in order to witness this remarkable production."
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